


Just to be the best I can

by DAZzle_10



Series: Trans Owen Farrell [6]
Category: Rugby RPF, Rugby Union RPF
Genre: Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Eating Disorders, Gen, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 09:49:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21013793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DAZzle_10/pseuds/DAZzle_10
Summary: A sequel of sorts to 'screaming behind the glass', so the same warnings apply: this is not a 'nice' fic; even if it isn't quite as hard-hitting, it disguises itself as something more optimistic than it is, so take care and look after yourselves.“Do you think we’re stupid, Owen?” Eddie asks.The Rugby World Cup is a stressful time for everyone involved, and sometimes, it can be hard to keep your demons locked away.





	Just to be the best I can

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest, I'm a little distracted as I write this, because I'm currently watching Japan vs Scotland (cue an 'oof' from my Dad as Japan score their second try...)
> 
> Anyway, I'm not quite sure whether I'm stressed, excited or what right now. On the one hand, my uni application is in, as of last Monday, so that's sorted, but I have *way* too many medical appointments to deal with this week, and THEN it was my club's presentation evening for last season on Friday, and I'm honoured/excited/terrified to be a Club Captain for the new season. And I have MAT on Wednesday 30th. And England are through to play Australia. And Brexit. And I could keep going, but I won't.
> 
> Before I stop waffling, I'd like to make the point that, at the end of England's match vs Argentina last weekend, not only had the record for most red cards at a RWC been broken (OHHH MY LIFE, that was some pace for Japan's third try), but *40%* of them had been for shoulder charge's to Owen's head.

“Owen.”

Eddie’s voice is firm in greeting, containing none of his usual cheer. His grip is tight as he shakes Owen’s hand, his face set in stone, and Owen tries not to buy into the signs too much as he sinks into the seat opposite his coach, but already, his palms are damp, his fingers shaky as he fiddles with the cloth of his shorts and tries to dry his hands as subtly as possible.

“Thank you for coming to see me at such short notice,” Eddie continues, still cool and detached, his attention seemingly distracted by the paper he holds in his hands.

There’s only one thing that Owen can imagine this being about. He’s not been up to standard at all; he _knows_ he hasn’t, and he’s trying. He doesn’t need anyone else to tell him that he’s not doing well enough, unless they can give him something more to do to fix it – something that will actually work in time to matter for this World Cup, because it’s too late to try a slow route and not take risks.

“If you could bear with me a few minutes, I’m just waiting for Rob to get here…”

_Rob? _

Confused, Owen blinks at Eddie and tries to work out what the team doctor could possibly have to do with his form at the moment. Perhaps they’re going to go down the concussion route – but Owen isn’t concussed, never was, no matter what the media has to say. Yes, OK, it doesn’t take a blow to the top of his head to get a concussion – he’s already had _that_ particular lecture from Jamie – but he’s fine, really. He wouldn’t hide something like that and risk the team.

Rob’s knock has him jumping a little, taken by surprise, and he watches warily as Eddie shuffles his papers, Rob lowering himself into a seat at Eddie’s side to leave them facing Owen down together, like a panel of judges questioning his suitability for the responsibilities he’s been entrusted with. He’s _trying_, he really is, and if he’s not doing well enough, then he can work on that. He just wishes they’d said something at the start.

“Alright,” Eddie clears his throat, eyes still tracking over whatever’s on the paper in his hand, then hands the sheet slowly to Rob, who scans down it much more quickly with steadily rising eyebrows. “To be frank, mate, I’m worried about you.”

_Concussion it is, then._

“My head’s fine,” Owen tells him, slumping back in his chair and trying not to sigh too obviously.

To his surprise, Eddie shakes his head.

“I’m not talking about concussion,” the coach corrects. “I’m talking about the two kilograms you’ve lost in the last week.”

Owen forces himself not to blink, loosening his fingers one by one when he realises that they’ve curled in the fabric of his shorts to bunch it up tightly. _Eddie doesn’t know_, he reminds himself, trying to take subtly deep breaths to calm himself. _You’re fine. There’s nothing wrong with it anyway._

“I’ve been working hard,” he offers. “I’m trying to –”

“Improve?” Eddie sighs, shaking his head, and that wasn’t exactly what Owen was going to say, but it encompasses the same thing. “Everyone’s working hard. They’re all either maintaining the same weight or gaining.”

Nervous, Owen turns his fingers to the hem of his shirt instead, trying to ignore the way it protrudes outwards. He’s working on that. Maybe he hasn’t been working hard enough? Maybe he hasn’t gained enough muscle; he’ll have to add in some more exercise in somewhere, though he doesn’t know where.

“I, um –” Owen stammers, trying to coordinate his tongue to verbalise words that he has not yet thought of. “I don’t know…”

“Do you think we’re stupid, Owen?” Eddie asks calmly, sitting forward to rest his elbows on the table between them.

“I…”

Lost, Owen forces himself to stop and wait for what Eddie has to say.

“I’m looking at all of this,” Eddie waves the sheet of paper, which has spent the last minute settled on the table, too far away for Owen to read, “And the only thing that’s missing is for you to admit that something’s going on.”

_Something’s going on?_ Exactly what does Eddie think Owen has been doing?

“I – I’m sorry,” Owen stumbles out, still struggling to find his bearings after the mention of weight. “I don’t know what you’re…?”

“We need you to say it yourself,” Eddie sighs, glancing down at the piece of paper. “Here. Have a look at this and tell me what’s been going on lately.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Owen takes the sheet and twists it around so that he can read it more easily, examining the bullet-point list.

‘_Lost 2kg_,’ is the very first line on the list, then, ‘_Excessive exercising, Reported as not eating appropriately, Claimed ‘not sick’ despite throwing up_…’

Owen stops reading there, fairly certain that he doesn’t want to see any more.

“What, um –” he swallows, unwilling to look at the paper but unable to meet Eddie’s eyes. “What is this about?”

“Have you read it all?” Eddie responds, flat and almost tired. “I think it’s fairly obvious, Owen.”

Hesitantly, Owen turns his attention back to the paper.

‘_Lack of energy during training, Teammates expressed concerns, Avoiding meals out of hotel, History of eating disorders’_

“A _history_?” His head jerks up, eyes widening involuntarily. “Why does – Why does this say…?”

The last point is the end of the list, but Owen wouldn’t have read on even if there had been more to see.

“Are you going to deny it?” Eddie counters.

Turning his gaze to the paper again, Owen stares blankly at the last line. No, he can’t deny it; he won’t outright lie to Eddie like that. He wasn’t aware that Eddie knew in the first place, though – otherwise, he’d have…

He’d have hidden his behaviours better, is what he’d have done, because anyone who knows about this side of his mental health would look at what he’s doing and assume the worst. He has it under control, though. This is just until he’s back to where he needs to be, and then he’ll stop. If he didn’t have to do it so quickly, it wouldn’t be like this, anyway.

“Who told you?” he finds himself asking, unable to draw his eyes from those final two words.

“Quite a few people, to be honest, mate,” Eddie sighs. “I spoke to Stuart Lancaster when I came into the role and asked him what I needed to know. That was one of the first things he said. Your club doctor passed it on with your other medical information – you agreed to that, remember?”

It had never occurred to Owen that they might share _this_ along with any injuries or information about his physical health.

“Your dad,” Eddie continues, and Owen thinks he might be too resigned to feel betrayed by that one. “And the fact that your Saracens teammates noticed and were concerned enough to come to Rob backs it all up.”

Owen surprises himself by huffing out a tired laugh.

“What do you need me to say, then?” he asks, trying and failing to lock down the defensive note that creeps into his voice. “Looks like you’ve got it all figured out.”

“We need you to tell us the truth,” Eddie retorts sharply, steel cutting through every bitten word; Owen blinks, non-plussed, at the sudden anger. “We have the facts here, but we can’t make assumptions about everything, however obvious. What’s going on, Owen?”

Silent, Owen looks from Eddie’s stony countenance to Rob’s softer smile, sympathetic and conciliatory. He’s not sure which one he dislikes being on the end of more.

“I’ve got it under control,” he hears himself say, and immediately, irritation towards himself rises.

He shouldn’t have admitted that there could be anything wrong in the first place.

“Got what under control?” Rob presses, the first time he’s spoken through this entire meeting.

“The…” Owen’s cheeks burn, and he waves a hand vaguely at the paper. “The eating… thing.”

“No, you don’t,” Eddie tells him simply. “No one ever has an eating disorder under control unless it’s not affecting them. Are you trying to avoid eating at the moment?”

Owen’s face feels like it might as well be on fire. Never, not once, has he wanted Eddie to know about this – not even in the desperate moments of weakness, when he hasn’t felt strong enough to keep doing what he needs to, when he’s wished that someone would take notice and stop him.

“Sometimes,” he has to admit, voice hoarse and small.

“And you’re limiting what you do eat when you can’t avoid meals?”

“It’s just to balance everything out,” Owen blurts out, although he already knows that explaining it is pointless, that Eddie won’t believe him; half the time, he’s not sure he believes himself, but it’s easier to just pretend. “I’ll eat too much sometimes, so I have to…”

Shrugging, he looks away.

“I won’t pretend to know if you really are eating more than you should or if you’re just convincing yourself of that,” Rob starts carefully, “But either way, eating less at other meals isn’t the way to go.”

Inexplicably, Owen feels his eyes sting.

“I know,” he mutters, squeezing them shut. “But I need to…”

He trails off with a lifted shoulder, unsure how to explain it properly.

“Tell us about Tuesday,” Eddie requests abruptly. “What happened there?”

_Shit_.

“I wasn’t ill,” Owen tells them reluctantly, hating the scrape of his throat as he says as much. “But I said that at the time – I didn’t want to miss training – I didn’t expect anyone to hear – to assume…”

“You made yourself throw up,” Eddie fills in, and Owen can only nod, twisting his lips in an effort to stop them curling downwards. “Is that the only time you’ve done that since you came into camp this summer?”

Neither Rob nor Eddie seem at all surprised when he shakes his head. That doesn’t stop Owen from burying his face in his hands in a weak attempt to hide from their judgement; he _knows_, deep down, that this isn’t healthy, but he can’t shake the thought that it’s what he _needs_. A lot of what he does as an athlete wouldn’t necessarily be healthy for a normal person, but _no pain, no gain_ is a saying Owen lives by.

“I’m not going to sugar-coat this,” Eddie tells him calmly, Owen almost slumping in relief when he realises that the interrogation component of this meeting is over, “If this behaviour continues, we will have to send you home.”

Every muscle in Owen’s body seems to lock, rigid and immovable as horror stabs through his chest and a hot prickle of anxiety runs over his skin.

“And we’ll have to be honest with World Rugby about why we’re doing that,” Eddie adds, which is a terrible thought as well, but it’s nothing compared to the thought of being sent home, of missing out on everything he’s worked so hard for and _wants_ so desperately. “We have to consider your welfare, and what’s best for the team. However, if you’re willing to cooperate with everything that we put in place to make sure you’re looking after yourself, and if you don’t try to work around it, then none of that needs to happen.”

“What –” Owen swallows to wet his throat, tongue strangely thick and clumsy in his mouth. “What do you have in mind?”

It’s Rob’s turn to hand Eddie a sheet of paper.

“We’ll be monitoring what you eat,” Eddie starts, and finally, offers Owen his first smile of the meeting, kind and almost sympathetic. “We don’t expect you to just sort yourself out, mate. We’ll give you guidance on what to eat – or if you need someone to plan out your meals for you, we can sort that out.”

“Probably best if…” Owen looks away, coughing quietly, then forces himself to push on despite his growing misgivings. “Probably best if someone tells me what to – what to –”

_Shit_, he’s going to hate this.

“Alright,” Eddie reaches for a pen to scribble a note on the paper. “We’ll work that out, then. We’re also going to insist that you stay with someone for at least half an hour after each meal. If you’re happy to tell one of your teammates, that can be one of them, but otherwise, you won’t be going anywhere without myself, Rob, or another of the backroom staff. Is that understood?”

Reluctantly, Owen nods and tries not to think too hard about what that means. They’re monitoring him – taking time out of their schedules, just to make sure that he doesn’t shove his fingers down his throat again. Internally, something screams that he should do whatever he can to convince them that he’s fine, that they don’t need to do any of this, because already, he feels weak and shaky, nausea rising at the thought of eating so much and not being able to get rid of it, of having to let it sit in his body and break down, seeping into his bloodstream –

He can’t afford to miss out on the World Cup. He’ll do whatever he has to in order to get through this tournament, and then afterwards, he can work something out – only Georgie knows about it, too, and he doesn’t know how he’d be able to keep it from her and still do everything he needs to, and he doesn’t want to be dealing with this around Tommy, the son he’s still so grateful to have, because if he went too far and pressed this onto Tommy, he doesn’t think he’d ever forgive himself.

(He hates the part of him that thinks it would be better for Tommy to start thinking about it from an early age, because then, he won’t ever be where Owen is now, constantly slipping from one extreme to the other, even though Owen knows that really, only one of his two states is an extreme – an extreme which just so happens to bounce all over the place like a fucking yoyo, sometimes too much but mostly too little – and the other is normal and healthy and _not_ overindulgence.)

“Good. Rob is going to get you in for regular check-ups just to make sure you’re looking after yourself, and we’ll be watching your training. If we think you’re low on energy, we won’t hesitate to pull you out and ask you a few questions. The moment you lie, you go home. The moment you make yourself throw up, you go home. If you don’t eat quite enough at some point or another, or you over-exercise, we can work with that, until it becomes consistent. Then you go home.”

Logically, Owen knows that they need to do this, that they’re helping him and looking out for the good of the team. That doesn’t mean he hates it any less, that he isn’t dreading every second of it – and that he isn’t already battling the urge to find ways around it.

“If you need anything desperately,” Rob jumps in, a little softer than Eddie’s no-nonsense delivery, “Feel free to come and find anyone. We are going to brief the coaches and backroom staff on some of this, so if you think you’re going to make yourself throw up, for example, and you’re not sure you’ll be able to stop yourself, do come and find someone who can watch you for the next while. We don’t _want_ you to have to leave, understand? But if it becomes obvious that we can’t keep it under control here, we won’t have any choice.”

Nodding jerkily, Owen tries and fails to meet their gazes.

“It’s not something to be ashamed of, Owen,” Eddie tells him firmly. “It’s a mental health disorder, and we understand that. No, it’s not ideal, but we can work around it, as long as you work with us. Now, in terms of monitoring you after meals, is it going to be me and Rob or a few of your teammates?”

Blowing out a breath, Owen squeezes his eyes tightly shut and forces himself to think it over. He doesn’t want his teammates to know, but he can’t imagine wasting half an hour of Eddie or Rob’s time after every single meal, just for them to hover over him and make sure he doesn’t fuck up.

“I’ll talk to my teammates,” he agrees tiredly, and Eddie nods.

“I’m going to ask that you do that today, where we can see it happen – if you give us some names, you can call them in now?”

_Right_.

“Jinx,” Owen croaks, resisting the urge to squeeze the bridge of his nose by fiddling with his ring instead, “Kruiso… Fordy.”

Three men he’s particularly close to, who already have some knowledge of his past difficulties. Anxiously, he waits for some kind of rebuttal, but Eddie merely nods, apparently happy with his choices.

“Go ahead and text them, then,” comes the assurance, and with shaking fingers, Owen does so, typing out a quick message to Jamie then copy-and-pasting it to send to both Georges: _Meeting, Eddie’s office, now_.

While he waits, he flips his phone over and over in his hands, fiddling nervously with both the device and anything else he can, including the fabric of his shorts and the zip on his jacket. He doesn’t want to do this at all.

“Why did you make me say it?” he asks eventually, fixing his eyes on the table as he speaks.

“We can’t jump to any conclusions or make arrangements if you don’t admit it first,” Eddie explains freely. “And we felt it would be better for you to acknowledge it yourself. Even if you don’t feel ready to get help, it’s a step towards the right road.”

Fordy is the first to arrive, unsurprisingly, and he blinks when he spots Rob, but doesn’t question it as he sits down.

“Morning,” he offers instead, gaze flitting curiously around at all of them then down at the paper still resting on the table in front of Owen.

Resisting the urge to shove it out of sight, Owen watches his childhood friend scan over it, taking in the way George’s face falls with each second.

“We’re just waiting for Kruis and Jamie,” Eddie explains after a short while of silence, and George nods distractedly, then lifts his head to stare at Owen with a horrible depth of pity and sorrow.

Owen turns his head away so that he doesn’t have to see the emotion, glad when the door swings open to reveal Jamie, Kruiso on his heels.

“Take a seat, both of you,” Eddie waves them in, “And we’ll get right to it. Owen?”

Throat suddenly tight, Owen swallows desperately to clear it and nods, trying not to twist his fingers too noticeably but likely not succeeding.

“Yeah,” he croaks, and has to cough to clear his airways. “Er… Lads, I…”

_Fuck_, he can’t do this. He needs to, though.

“My eating disorder’s back,” he forces out, the words clumsy and discordant even before they pass his lips, and the dejection that drips into his friends’ expressions is sickening.

He already hates himself for admitting it.

“I – Eddie and Rob are putting some – some things in place,” he manages weakly. “So I don’t have to go – To make sure I’m looking after myself. I can’t – can’t be by myself after meals. For half an hour. So, um…”

It almost feels as though he’s shrinking under their combined stares – and not in a good way. He suddenly feels exposed, hyperconscious of every flaw, and he wants to grab his skin and rip it away, rearrange everything until he looks presentable and only then let them see him.

“Could – Could you…? Would you be willing to…?”

“You want us to keep an eye on you over that time?” Jamie asks, quiet and subdued, and Owen barely succeeds in summoning a nod. “Yeah, mate. Of course.”

Kruiso and Fordy murmur similar responses, and for a moment, everything falls silent.

“Come here, mate,” Jamie huffs, swiping roughly at his eyes and already reaching over to pull Owen into a tight embrace and rub his back with one large, soothing palm. “You’re not alone, yeah? You’re never alone.”

Owen wishes that could be more comforting than it is, but he already knows it doesn’t work like that. It never works like that. Still, he lets Jamie hold him for several seconds, accepting the hug without protest, and tries not to think about how little he wants their help right now.

If he can just hold out for the rest of the tournament, he can do what he needs to when he gets home.


End file.
